How Do We Live After A Disaster of Immense Proportions

The Lutheran theologian David Yeago offered a seminary professor’s view of plagiarism among ministers in response to my Pastoral Plagiarism . It spurred me to look on the web for other articles of his, and I came across one from last year that might still interest some of you thinking about being a traditional Christian in a mainline denomination: his In the Aftermath , a reflection on the 2009 assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. He begins:

I’m writing for those who share with me the conviction that the actions taken by the Assembly on human sexuality constitute a theological, ethical, ecclesiological, and ecumenical disaster of immense proportions . . . .

The question I want to address is “How do we live now?” Is this the “break-point,” the point at which, as one good friend put it in private correspondence, we must judge that this branch of the church has died and withered? What future can traditionalists in the ELCA look forward to besides contempt, irrelevance, and dwindling numbers? I want to address this, moreover, not as a question about organization and strategy, but as a spiritual question, a question about how we are to live our faith in a fallen and erring church.